book on focussing

[trudee]

I just started taking 4x5, black and white pictures. could anyone suggest a book on how to focus with 4x5 camera.

[Mike Lopez]

"View Camera Technique," by Stroebel (sp?)

Or basically any other view camera guide.

[John Cook]

Check out this page which is found elsewhere on this site:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/how-to-focus.html

[Don Wallace]

I strongly suggest that you stay away from the Stroebel book unless your hobby is mathematics. It is detailed to the point of being a hindrance. Steve Simmons' book is much better. However, the best starting point by far is the relevant page on this site

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/how-to-focus.html

[Alan Davenport]

I agree that the Simmons book is an excellent resource. Another is Harold Merklinger's web site, though his "hinge rule" (derived from Scheimpflug) doesn't seem to get much respect and so a lot of purists ignore him. See his article, Principles of View Camera Focus. It's a PDF, set up so that clicking on the diagrams should bring up a movie showing how it actually works. Even if you ignore his "hinge rule" or don't care to play with the mathematics, this is a great demonstration of how the Scheimpflug Rule works, IMHO.

[Paul Metcalf]

Also check out Mar/Apr 1996 Photo Techniques magazine articles by Stephen Peterson and Paul Hansma. Their approach is very straight forward.

[QT Luong]

Note that if you go to the pages of this site that have been suggested, you'll find a PDF copy of the two articles refered by Paul Metcalf.

[Alex Hawley]

You don't need a book. Just read the article posted on this site as suggested above. Its not as hard as it sounds. The ground glass doesn't lie like an SLR does.

I use a magnifying glass instead of a loupe, simply because I had the magnifying glass laying around. The only problems I've ever had is when I neglected to look in a corner.

[Scott Walton]

In short, for most stuff, compose first and focus on the first third of the image and let DOF take the rest... With portraiture, the eyes have to be in sharp focus (to communicate or interact with the viewer) and with the appropriate f stop the nose will come in. This is simplified and sure, you can do all the calculations but what it comes down to is looking in the ground glass and making sure! Polaroids help but aren't necessary. As someone above posted... the ground glass doesn't lie!